US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on May 26 for "Failsafe input/output electrostatic discharge protection with diodes" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,640,558, issued on May 26, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Failsafe input/output electrostatic discharge protection with diodes" was invented by Tzu-Heng Chang (New Taipei City, Taiwan) and Hsin-Yu Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods are provided for fail-safe protection of circuitry from electrostatic discharge due through input and output connections. The power circuitry may include a string of diodes, connections to power lines, and particular diodes for voltage pull-up and pull-down clamping. There may be both a pull-up third diode in the diode string...